And before you any of you start grossing me out by wondering aloud how big those hand and footprints are (seriously, BLEGH) please allow me to direct our attention back to the far more important headline: THERE’S GONNA BE A RAGER! You too can attend, if you have $350 to $4,000 to spend on an evening in sorta-proximity to basketball’s most talented douchetool.

According to TMZ, this over-the-top, “Asian-themed” bash is not one to miss.

The party is supposed to be INSANE — with organizers dropping roughly $50,000 to give Boulevard 3 nightclub an Asian-themed makeover in honor of Kobe enshrining his hands and feet at Grauman’s Chinese Theater earlier that day. … including a 15-foot custom made dragon.

A CUSTOM MADE DRAGON! Pish. If we had 50 Gs to spend on an “Asian theme,” you bet your ass we wouldn’t party without:

We know the bar is low for both teenagers and actresses when it comes to awareness of global events and having brains larger than peas and all, but we were still stunned when we read little Taylor Momsen‘s response to OK! Magazine’s inquiry about her thoughts on the Haiti earthquake fallout.

It’s easy to get worried about stuff, especially swine flu, also known as the H1N1 virus, a virus, that’s facing the world, and has been for long time. Swine flu, a virus, also known as the H1N1 virus, is scary, and bad. We don’t know a lot about swine flu, that is, H1N1, but swine flu is a bad virus, and most people do not want to get it, so it seems. It’s important that Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s doctor, is investigating this flu, so that we know more things about it, and find different ways to not get it, and HOLY CRAP DOES ANYBODY PROOFREAD CNN’S FRONT PAGE BLURBS FOR EXCESSIVE COMMAS AND CLUNKY, SIMPLETON, RUN-ON SENTENCES?

CNN reports that Sarah Palin will be the keynote speaker at Hong Kong-brokerage firm CLSA’s Investors conference on September 23 (past speakers have included Al Gore, Bill Clinton, and Alan Greenspan). It will be the first trip to Asia for the 45 year-old, ex-Alaskan governor, who famously bragged during the presidential campaign that Alaska’s proximity to Russia gave her foreign policy street cred.

We’re not surprised that writer Cintra Wilson, shopping for the NY Times Style section last week, felt out of place during her visit to Derek Lam‘s flagship house of luxe on Crosby Street in NYC’s SoHo. After all, let’s be honest. Few would.

But we’ve been struggling for days to figure out why Wilson, while characterizing Lam’s high-cotton world (and rather resentfully so), also took this sideways potshot at his “Eastern” demographic:

“Mr. Lam’s flagship is his version of that genteel world where the rich are still as spoiled and sheltered as they ever were; his customer is a precious orchid, lovingly tended and exhibited under his enormous acrylic bell.

This recipe for femininity looks, to me, as if it is aimed toward a stereotypical Hong Kong billionaire’s wife. The clothes evoke a demure, under-control, decidedly non-rowdy (read: non-Western) type of woman who appreciates her role as an ornament of great value, and sits prettily and quietly in Gulfstream jets.”

Funnily enough, Jen and I are actually quite familiar with a Hong Kong billionaire woman or two. And let me tell y’all, those bitchez iz crazay! They’re not demure, nor under-control, nor “decidedly non-rowdy” (gosh, the more I think about it, the more Wilson’s description seems fitting of Kate Gosselin).

We learned via TechCrunch that the newest Interwebs sensation in Japan is a social networking/virtual dating site called Webkare (“web boyfriend”). The site is geared exclusively towards girls and, to participate, they compete and collaborate with other members to win the heart of one four desirable cartoon boys on the site.

Let’s ignore the details of the competition for now. From a glance at the boys, I can admit that they are among the, um, prettiest virtual people I’ve ever seen. But until somebody looks like my boyfriend Teppei Teranishi…

In what has become a grand tradition of trying to make immodest musical performers (like Gwen and Beyonce) bow down in fully-clothed, booty-not-shakin’ fashion, the Islamic opposition party of Malaysia has turned its efforts towards banning an Avril Lavigne performance set for August 29 in Kuala Lumpur.

“‘It is considered too sexy for us. … It’s not good for viewers in Malaysia,’ party official Kamarulzaman Mohamed said. ‘We don’t want our people, our teenagers, influenced by their performance. We want clean artists, artists that are good role models.’ Kamarulzaman sent protest letters to the Culture, Arts and Heritage Ministry and Kuala Lumpur’s mayor last week, calling for the concert to be canceled.”

According to the CNN report, female cafe owner Yuki Hirohata came up with the concept by walking the streets of Tokyo’s Shibuya ward. Two hundred women told her that they wanted a cafe where the waiters were all “male, good looking, treated them nice, but most importantly, were Western.”

“‘Being a gentleman is embarrassing for Japanese men,’ says cafe owner Yuki Hirohata. ‘Our culture isn’t like that.’ Hirohata says women are exhausted by the rules of Japanese society, unyielding in its expectations of a woman’s role in maintaining a career, home, husband, and family.

‘We’re tired from our daily lives,’ says [a] customer. ‘These guys are different from Japanese men. They’re smoother, and make me feel special.’“

Um, what the hell is going on? First of all, everybody knows the whole “princess” thing is tired and requires far more than a cheap tiara and some tea (get me DIAMONDS! AND GOWNS! AND SOME PEACOCKS!) to be properly executed.

Moreover, are we gonna sit back and let a bunch of sleazy expats take all the credit for gentlemanly behavior? COME ON, bros! Time to step it up! Let’s (you) open some doors, and pull out some chairs, and pour some champagne, and put some caviar on blini with some creme fraiche and egg whites! And how about some sexy tunes? And how about taking the dog out while we’re (you’re) at it?

All of this is not hard and I know there are gentlemen among you…so step it up and hold on to our ladies! This is a matter of pride.

News outlets are alive with yesterday’s word that “Professor Splash,” (aka Darren Taylor) a professional high-diver, broke his own Guinness World Record for highest shallow water dive at Colorado hotspot, Hyland Hills Water World.

Even though we don’t think he’s an actual professor (like Jen’s dad), we have to give Taylor props for accomplishing this lifelong pursuit of a world record! Our parents have always wanted us to break some kind of world record–most lives saved, most consecutive perfect gymnastics scores, least amount of time needed to find a disease cure–and we’ve never been able to do it.

But Taylor is a world champion! And more than that, a man who has reached his lifelong goal!